February 2008 - Issue 9
Welcome back.
So how should I introduce this month's fantastic fiction? Linux? I have been using Ubuntu pretty exclusively now for ... nah, how about grandparents? Flippin' 'vettes? I know! Teeth!
I've always had a strange relationship with my teeth. I first became really aware of them when I was eight or nine, and my brother had just stolen my cassette radio (which is strange considering he's deaf). Now, I loved that radio. So naturally, I chased him through the house, out of the house, back into the house, and we found ourselves on either side of a door, both pushing to keep the other one out. And then he thought he'd be a smart-ass and hop back, thrusting the radio at me. Two seconds later, I spat out a sizable chunk of my top left front tooth. |
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For the week before I could get to the dentist to have it capped, it stung, it burned, it gave me chills. That open, exposed nerve. Then it was capped (badly) and I forgot about my teeth for a while.
Then as a teenager, I noticed they were really sensitive to cold milk (not cold anything else), so I went back to the dentist. She told me I didn't have sensitive teeth and to stop whining. Then she told me I had three big cavities. But they weren't bothering anybody, so I forgot about them.
Ten years later, I'm in South Korea, and I think to myself: I've got the money, I've got the insurance, what the hell ... I'm going to have those cavities filled. $750 and three gold filling later, my head is now worth quite a bit of money. And the dentist says in passable English, “Your wisdom teeth look like the surface of the moon.” And then he shows me, and I'm expecting the Apollo 11 mission any second.
Anyway, all that just to say that I got my first wisdom tooth pulled out last week. And it didn't hurt. And my gum feels like the inside of a rotten tomato. Dae Han Min Guk!*
Really, I just wanted to take a quick trip down memory lane because quite a bit of our fiction this quarter deals with reflecting on past events. “The Filigree” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro deals with a woman who knows that she has a mere 24 hours to live. “Kllin Jack the Malakite” by Michael John Grist shows us why Killin Jack does what he does. “Lovesong of Jack McNally” tries to show us how important our past is to the present and the future. “The Survivors of the September” by Devin Miller has another countdown to death, and tells us why you've got to keep going, even when there's no hope. Add to that “CEO” by Edward McKeown, about a mailbot who decides to fight forced retirement, “n00bs” by Ramon Rozas III, where an alien cube sets down on the White House lawn, “The Snows of Earth” by Michael Heald, about dealing with hope and reality (even if that 'reality' takes place on a colony on the other side of a wormhole), “'Til Death Do Us” by Gary Cuba, about the possibilities of bringing your loved ones back, and “Reconnoiter” by Atomjack alumni Marshall Payne.
Enjoy it. That's an order.
Adicus Ryan Garton, editor Cosmic
P.S. Your chance to vote in the Million Writers Award is here! Check storySouth now to send in your vote for your favorite online fiction of 2007.
*KOREA!
Update: Robert Laughlin (who wrote "In the Evening Made" in the first issue of Atomjack) has created his own literary award for previously published short fiction, the Micro Award. You can find out more at the official website.
Update: P.P.S. Advertising. It's this or subscriptions. And not because I want to make money. It's because I want to pay my contributors the most I can afford (which in turn brings in more and more submissions, and therefore gives YOU the reader, the absolute best stories available.)
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Atomjack is a publication of the Cyrus
Corporation, a subsidiary of the United Securitarian Authority.
©2008 susurrus press
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